


The Incident After Hours

by Ilene_May



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom, Marauders Era - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-22 13:01:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7440265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilene_May/pseuds/Ilene_May
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sirius complains about James' Invisibility Cloak not being exciting enough, the four boys come up with an alternative.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Incident After Hours

“Right, right, right, right!”

“No, left, avoid the bloody stairs!”

“Quiet, someone’s going to hear us!”

“Aw, Pete, no one’s around.”

“Merlin’s beard!”

“Ah, shit.”

“My office! Now!”

 

“I told you.”

“Yes, Peter, we know, now can you stop being smug?” James asked, scanning Professor McGonagall’s office for a way out, despite having been in said office enough   
times to know there wasn’t one.

“He’s right, you know,” Remus sighed. “If we hadn’t been so loud, we probably wouldn’t have been caught.”

“But we can’t get in trouble, right?” Sirius reaffirmed, managing somehow to bounce anxiously. “Crikey, these chairs are hard.”

“Are you discovering this only now?” Remus asked, voice dripping with sarcasm. “And no, we can’t.”

“You’re sure?” Peter asked. James mentally rolled his eyes. Doubting Remus was almost as stupid as underestimating him, only less painful. Then again, Peter’s mother had threatened him with sue chef duty if he got another detention, and James had had her cooking. It wasn’t often safe for human consumption, and James imagined the cooking process would take a few years off one’s life.

“Pete, it’s Remus,” James reassured his friend while tipping his chair back as far as he could without falling over. “If he says we can’t get in trouble for it, he means that there has been no rule made against it since the very beginning of Hogwarts.”

“Yes, I know, but-“

The door flew open with an exasperated bang, causing James and his chair to go crashing to the floor.

“Mister Potter, get up,” McGonagall snapped, storming into her office and sitting down harshly behind her desk. He did so quickly, not wanting to irritate her further. “You four don’t know how to keep out of trouble. What were you thinking?”

The boys glanced at each other nervously. Usually she would already be setting their punishment, but if they did something she found exceptionally stupid, it could be hours before punishment would come up.

“-disgrace to your families. You’ll be having detention for at least a week.”

“Professor?” Sirius cut in, continuing despite McGonagall’s hard glare. James winced, knowing that glare far too fondly. “What exactly are we receiving detention for?”

“For being out of bed after hours!” McGonagall yelled, rising from her chair.

Ignoring the professor’s anger and giving her his most charming smile, Sirius replied, “But professor, we were in bed.”

 

Like most of their most brilliant plans, it was Remus’ idea. The boys were messing around their dormitory one Saturday in late November, Remus doing schoolwork, Peter trying to tidy up a bit, and James and Sirius not doing much of anything, when the inspiration struck.

“It’s just gotten a bit boring, that’s all,” Sirius was saying.

Pocketing his Snitch and sitting up on his bed, feeling a tiny bit offended, James replied, “Sure, but how else would we sneak around at night? I know the Cloak’s a bit of a squeeze with all four of us now, but the Map only does so much good. If a teacher’s coming and there’s nowhere to duck into, we’d be buggered.”

“I know, but still,” Sirius sighed, flopping onto Remus’ bed and disturbing the young werewolf. “It’s not Marauder-y enough.”

Remus looked down at the fifteen-year old in his lap, bemused. “What’re you on about this time?”

“He’s saying that the Cloak isn’t exciting enough,” Peter said before Sirius could, causing the latter to pout and Remus to snicker. “Personally, I think it’s fine. It only needs to fit all four of us at night, and it’s too dark for anyone to notice that our feet poke out a bit.”

“Which wouldn’t be a problem if Moons wasn’t so bloody tall,” James smirked and threw a sock at the boy in question, causing a cry of protest.

“It’s not even that, it’s that the Cloak’s not that exciting,” Sirius complained, rolling so that he was more on Remus’ stomach. “There’s none of our pizzazz.”

“Pizzazz,” Peter deadpanned. “Honestly, Sirius.”

Ignoring his bickering friends, James focused in on Remus. Most of his more brilliant ideas came from some of Sirius’ rambling (Merlin knows there’s more than enough of it), and, as it had been a while since they’d had any truly inspired plans, James was hoping for something worthy of their reputation. For a few moments Remus just looked thoughtful, but then his expression changed into one of slightly evil genius.

“Shut up, both of you!” James yelled, excitement colouring his voice. “Remus’s got his Thinking Face!”

Peter and Sirius turned to face Remus and found that he was indeed wearing his infamous Thinking Face. The face that brought trouble wherever it went. The face that brought the sort of ideas that could get them expelled if the teachers could ever figure out who did it and how. The face of pure undiluted genius.

“So what you want is a more exciting way to be out of bed after hours?” Remus asked Sirius, looking at him in that funny way that made you feel that, while Remus was looking straight at you, he was really looking through you.

“Yes…” Sirius answered cautiously, fully aware that there were two ways this could go for him. He could either be presented with a brilliant idea, or subjected to a brilliant prank. James was hoping for the latter, but either one would be worth witnessing.

“What if we didn’t leave the bed at all?” Remus asked, a maniacal grin lighting up his face. After a brief moment of complete and utter confusion (which was quite common whenever Remus was talking), James cottoned on.

“Well done, Moony, old chap,” James said, smiling the same smile. “We are wizards, after all.”

“Wouldn’t we get in trouble?” questioned Peter, catching on to the plan. Remus was the type to figure out a way to evade the rules without actually breaking them, but it never hurt to check, James thought, even if breaking rules was more fun.

“The rule says we can’t be out of bed after hours,” Remus said, his mind working so quickly you could practically see the steam pouring out his ears. “There’s nothing about where the bed can or can’t be after hours, or during hours, for that matter.”

“Shouldn’t you double check?” Sirius asked. Unlike Peter, he didn’t care about detention (he didn’t have a reason to), but he loved watching the staff create new rules after they did something that no rules prevented. James privately agreed with him. He thought breaking the rules without leaving a trace and watching the staff try to pin it on them with no evidence was the best aftermath of a prank well done, but watching them slowly turn crimson with the four Marauders explained why they couldn’t get in trouble for whatever they’d done was pretty satisfying as well.

“After four years of living with you two,” Remus began, rolling his eyes in a most dramatic fashion, “I practically have the damn thing memorized.”

“Good man, Re,” James grinned, joining Sirius and Remus on Remus’ bed. “Hop on, Pete. We’ve got some spells to work out.”

 

McGonagall’s face turned crimson. “It doesn’t matter if you were in the bed or not!”

“Actually, professor,” Remus said, somehow looking completely angelic as he did, “there aren’t any rules as to where the bed may or may not be. All it says is that we can’t be out of bed after hours. We were in the bed, which means we weren’t breaking any rules.”

“He knows, he’s checked,” Peter added. It was generally the Marauder’s strategy to have Peter and Remus do the talking their way out of trouble, as teachers seemed to think their only crime was befriending James and Sirius (James had no idea why they thought that. Pete and Re were responsible for at least half their ideas, and definitely the ones where they couldn’t get in trouble for it).

“So since we weren’t breaking any rules, it wouldn’t be right to give us detention, would it?” Remus asked, looking like the picture of innocence. 

McGonagall sighed and rubbed her temples. “Mr. Lupin, you were out of your dormitory at night. You were breaking the rules.”

“But the rule isn’t about being out of the dormitory,” Peter argued. “It’s about being out of bed, which we weren’t.”

James sent Sirius a look of both envy and surprise. No matter how many times they did this, James would never fail to be amazed by how skilled Peter was at talking himself (and his friends) out of trouble. They were all pretty good at it, having been rule-breaking for as long as they had, but Peter was the master, no two ways about it.

“Technicalities,” Professor McGonagall ground out. James could feel her composure slipping, which meant they were either about to get away with it or about to end up in more trouble than they could imagine. He started frantically looking at Remus, trying to telepathically tell him to do his prefect thing and get them out of this. Remus, bless him, understood and immediately started defusing.

“Professor,” Remus began carefully, “since there really isn’t any rule about levitating your bed around the school, after hours or not, and we technically didn’t break the curfew rules, then what are you punishing us for?”

McGonagall let out her long-suffering sigh (or the Marauders Sigh, as James called it), sat back down, and put her head in her hands. “Fine. You’re free to go. There won’t be any punishment. Just don’t make too much noise on your way back.”

“Thank you, Professor,” Peter said, standing up with his friends and exiting the office.

“That went well,” Sirius grinned as the door shut behind them.

“You’re telling me,” James said, slinging his arms around Remus and Peter, who both tried to duck away. “Without these two we’d have been dead!”

“Next time we find a loophole,” Remus began, looking a little put out, “let’s try to keep it unknown long enough for us to use it twice.”

 

“There has been a slight change in our curfew rules. From now on, no student is allowed out of his or her house area after hours. Failure to adhere to this rule will result in detention.”


End file.
